


drunk and driven by a devil's hunger

by sa00harine



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Beverly gets hurt, Eddie takes his medicine, Mike Hanlon is the best of all of us, Richie makes a call, instead of Mike calling first pennywise comes to them first instead, it all happens but it's more paranormal I guess, mainly character analysis through the form of scaring them shirtless, sad scary angst hours on main, stan takes a bath, very psychological
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-12 17:02:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20567807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sa00harine/pseuds/sa00harine
Summary: Through trembling hands and glass eyes, Mike Hanlon picks up the phone to make six of the most urgent calls he’d ever have to make in his life.





	drunk and driven by a devil's hunger

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! This is based mostly on the book, but I've included some of the movie. In summary, I tried to balance both worlds. Anyway, this is exactly what I said it is: a character study on the losers through Pennywise coming to them as adults before Mike can warn them. Hope you like it!

That summer night, unlike any other in the past twenty-seven years, seemed quite harmless. In fact, Mike himself felt chipper although the clock had just struck 10 pm and he still wasn’t home from the library. Work called- pressing stickers into donated books called- and well, he had come to feel safer within the book-clad walls of the library than home and alone some nights. 

Of course, he wasn’t any more lonesome at home than the library. But the library had a particular company that was unmatched and unrivalled by the other homes he’s stayed in. Perhaps it was the chimes just outside grating in the wind or the sense that every writer and historian was here with him. Here in the musty, leathery covers that haven’t been opened sometimes, in years. 

He could practically hear Richie Toizer’s remark, which would have been a stuffy voice he’d named the Old Librarian With the Stick Up Her Ass, say  _ Michael, dahliiing! You’se must get home an’ in bed, or else you’se gowna catch a cold! Awl this’eer dust can’t be no good for a young man!  _

Strangely enough, Mike had heard that improved drawl on the radio just last week. The squeaky- though accurate- moneymaking decibels of his old friend’s voice had rekindled the summer of 1958. Yes, it had been terrible- traumatic even, in all of their eyes, but none of them- at least not Mike, had ever known better friends and stronger bonds than he’d known then.

And maybe he missed it just a bit, Mike thought idly as he rolled the sticker into his last book- a new hit written by Big Bill- Bill Denbrough.  _ The Black Rapids  _ is what it is called. 

Mike sets it aside for himself to read. It now sits under the stoop of his desk, next to the keyboard on the clanky computer. The computer was about a year new, and it was well efficient. But he’d preferred the old-fashioned way of simply marking down matters on a notepad. 

Dimly, he hears a scraping by the windows and the door. With his back to the noise, Mike goes stiff alright, remembering just how the sound used to frighten him. He takes his time turning. To his own satisfaction, the only things there are fine chimes in silver, slowly creating melodies, and the bushes outside the door. It was late. He hadn’t slept too well lately, all consumed by residual thoughts of the past and inklings he had taken to keeping track of in a spiral notebook by his bedside. His fractured mind was bound to resort to crazying him up. 

That’s what Mike Hanlon told himself as he took the books and went to sort them. That’s what he’d been telling himself for years- when Beverly Marsh and Ben Hanscom and Stanley Uris moved away. That’s what he’d repeated, all mantra-like and haunting between his ears, when Bill Denbrough came to say goodbye. That’s what came to him when Richie Toizer and Eddie Kaspbrak drove by for the final time. 

Lucky for him, Mike reminds himself as he shelves the last novel, it’s rang true every time. 

Every time until now, he says to himself with dread when he spies a red balloon tied to the chimes that hadn’t been there before. 

He was a stable man with a flying head on his best days, but he was never insane. And he had scarce thought he was until that balloon was swiftly popped by a talon he was sure he wouldn’t have to see again. 

The bird. It all rushes back to Mike with a throb in his head, over at the smokestack when he was no older than twelve, the giant bird had nearly shred him to pieces. And then the rock fight, where he’d found a home in six other bottom feeders of the social hierarchy, and then the faceoff with the dancing clown, the faceoff with Pennywise. 

Twenty-seven years had gone so fast. 

Was it time already to summon the rest back to the hometown of their nightmares? 

The bird can now be heard in giant tracks on top of the library. Shrill taps of its feet shake the ceiling. Mike takes the bat he hid under his desk and without a trace of hesitation, as if he’s being pulled by a force greater than instinct, exits the library with nothing to lose. He glares above the building, bat resting against his shoulder, winded up like a toy that’s ready to burst, and to his own festering terror, it’s gone.

A laughing clown stands in its place. 

Mike Hanlon wraps the bat in a death grip. 

“Mikey,” drawls Pennywise. “Mikey Ikey, why so glum, why so  _ tired?”  _ The clown trapises along the roof. “Somebody hasn’t slept well,  _ oh no,  _ you haven’t slept at  _ all _ ,” the clown says between giggles reminiscent of the ones he, Stan, Ben, and Bev had heard outside the house on Neibolt street.

One thing Mike’s sure of: he’s missed his friends but he hasn’t missed this damned 

(dancing)

clown at all. 

Instead of swinging the bat, he throws it. Pennywise cackles wildly and before Mike’s eyes, the clown is now the bird again, and the bird is taking off with the bat, now tiny in comparison to it’s near ten-foot feathers, tucked into its talons. 

The wind rivets off its wings and hits him in the face with a cruel breeze. He thinks he still hears Pennywise laughing.

It- the  _ It  _ that has forged their dreams and futures in ink wrung from dead bodies, has returned. 

-

Stan Uris comes home from work, taking in the chaste, clean whiff of the apartment he shares with his wife. He sets down his briefcase and embraces her before setting off to his evening bath. This was how every day went, organized by him in his own fastidious manner. 

Yes, the laps of the sun and moon often blended into one another, but it was a safe, steady life. That was all Stan Uris had ever wanted. 

He smiles at the silhouette of Patty bent over the coffee table, sewing buttons onto his shirts in the light of the TV, rerunning old sitcoms and such, before making his way to the bathroom. 

The walls are white and the mirror is vivid enough to be a window. The cabinets are sorted by his own hygiene and his wife’s array of make up. He warms the bath and gingerly steps out of his formal workwear. 

Minutes pass as Stan settles himself in the water. Patty tells him that it’s too hot- that he’ll burn his skin if he stays in too long. He doesn’t disagree, but assures her he’ll always get out right when he’s done. 

He closes his eyes, feeling the pressure between his shoulder blades relax. Feeling steam rush into his mouth and past his tongue when his jaw relaxes. Feeling the water under his fingernails working on the dust that had resided under there throughout the day. 

To Stanley Uris, and to everyone who has wormed their way past being his acquaintance- which wasn’t much of anyone since he’d left Derry twenty- something years ago- cleanliness was priority. He had grown up with a mother to strictly berate him for spilling milk after he poured himself cereal, or for having just one wrinkle in his clothes. His father wasn’t much better. He’d come home from the Quarry once, Beverly Marsh, Richie Toizer, and Mike Hanlon at his heels, all walking their bikes as they were in soaked clothes that wouldn’t take kindly to chafing on the abrupt seat of the bike. His father had been sitting on their porch, and couldn’t be quick enough in nabbing Stan by his shirt collar and dragging him inside. Of course, he was exceedingly grateful not to have a father like Bev’s or a mother like Eddie Kaspbrak’s, because his parents shone like a polished trophy when put beside those two. Though, Stan wondered who he would be if not for the hereditary habits that had crept into his regimen. 

He woke up early in the morning- the same time his father did when he was a kid- and snuck off to work hours before his wife would wake. He rearranged the dishes or folded laundry when he got anxious- like his mother had done after a long day. 

If he was faring this way, he entertained the thought of Eddie Kaspbrak still hanging onto his aspirator and taking his routine medicine. Eddie had come to them, somewhere between the highs and lows of the summer of 1958, in a red rage that would have been hilarious coming from a boy who couldn’t look any of them in the eye due to how short he was. But they all listened closely and startled at the discovery of placebos when shared by Eddie between staggered, angry breaths. 

Stan Uris was no hypochondriac, but he was, however, what Richie Tozier had mockingly called a  _ clean freak extraordinaire, a connoisseur of cleanliness,  _ and a _ scared man in the face of filth.  _

He laughs now, affectionately owning that terminology as his household didn’t look much different now than it did the very first day he moved in. He thought he didn’t want to soil the new atmosphere, but after a decade, he just didn’t want to soil anything at all. 

He becomes conscious enough to feel how the water has gotten warmer instead of the slightly uncomfortable tepid it usually would become at this point, and a mighty amount stickier too. His eyes open, and he has to blink twice, three times until he finds himself in the scariest predicament he’s been in since he was twelve years old with a monster hovering above him, its teeth about to sink into his flesh. 

The water he was soaking in was no longer water. It was a stupefying mixture of mud, greywater, and blood. 

Stan Uris chokes on a scream, scooting backwards and grabbing at the towel he’d folded on top of the toilet seat. His fingers brush the fabric before the water ripples harshly. It’s too dark- a murky greyish red, for him to see just what atrocity is under the surface, but the thought that he isn’t alone anymore scares him enough so that he’s clawing at the curtain hanging in front of him. 

A hand bursts from the water, hauntingly familiar to the drowned boy’s he’d encountered at the Standpipe. This time he does scream, suddenly forgetting he was at home with his wife a room away, humming some oldies love song under her breath. No, he’s in Derry, Maine, and he never left. 

As the hands turn into a body- a  _ corpse _ \- and the mouth reveals rotten teeth and stinking breath creeping closer to Stanley in the filthy water, he screams through labored breaths. 

It is the boy, and there’s more! 

At his feet, coming from the drain, Stan can feel as an additional set of hands takes hold of his ankles, and  _ drags.  _

He goes under, and the water is burning hot. Hot, thick, and rushing into his nostrils. Stan gags around the horrid water, opening his mouth to make way for the words that saved him the first time.

(_Sparrow! Finch! Blue jay! Crow!) _

More and more gunk floods his throat and Stanley becomes aware that he’s out of air.

He splashes like a child in the water amongst friends would until the hands are tossed off and with a blink, the water is clear and quite cold. 

Patty looms over the bathtub’s edge. Her face is kind and her eyes are worried. 

“Stanley, is everything alright?” 

Her voice is sweet but it does nothing to break his trance. Stan Uris is seeing double- moldy, rancid water between his feet and clear water at his chest. The knobs for  _ hot  _ and  _ cold  _ seem more like mocking silver eyes. He gasps into the hand, which he’s thrown over his mouth. 

And he sits, unresponsive to everything Patty says, staring at the (knobs) eyes at the other end of the tub.  _ Hot and cold. Hot and cold. Hot and cold. Hot and  _

-

Deathly. Downright dealthly. Eddie Kaspbrak was feeling just this as he none-to-gently slammed the door to his house. He gets maybe six feet, nothing more, into the living room, when Myra appears on top of the stairs. 

“Darling,” she peeps hesitantly, softly. “Are you doing alright?” 

_ Fuckin’ peachy,  _ is what Eddie would say if he was twelve again and surrounded by friends who didn’t coddle him or remind him to take his pills or-

He stops in his tracks. He hadn’t remembered his friends since he’d first moved away. Had today really been cognisant enough to recall memories he’d shoved so far back into his head? Richie Toizer, Bill Denbrough, Ben Hanscom, Mike Hanlon.. They sure wouldn’t soft talk him on a bad day. They’d clap him on the back, and Richie would say in his Irish Cop voice  _ it’s against this’eer law that y’re feelin’ down boy! Turn th’t frown upsyde down Eds!  _ And magically, Eddie’s woes would be replaced in favor of annoyance- appreciative annoyance. 

But then again, that patch of friends had come with a bloodthirsty eldritch being that still sends shivers down Eddie’s spine. He shrugs off the thought and his hand goes the protruding aspirator in his pocket. It wasn’t often that he used it anymore, but he did bring it everywhere like a security blanket. 

“Eddie, baby,” Myra murmurs, closer now. “Did work bother you?”

God, she even talked like his mother. 

He stomachs the grief his day had caused him- nothing more than a build-up of inconveniences and a variety of hard-hitting jabs by extravagant celebrities he had the pleasure of driving. 

Well, at least he got paid well. 

A chubby, warm hand takes hold of his shoulder and massages the tension there. Eddie sighs, letting himself relish in the contact for just a second until her hands turn grating- pressing hard into all the wrong places. 

“Long day,” Eddie manages when her thumb digs into his back. 

Myra nods. She continues her ministrations for a few passing moments, and then stands so she’s facing Eddie. 

Her eyes, beady and buried in the wrinkles overwhelming her face, find his. He’s struck with the same feeling he got when his mother attempted to cheer him up- though that was usually with cartoonish bandaids and a glass of water only for the purpose of swallowing pills. 

“Eddie, baby,” she says again. 

Involuntarily, he flinches. Something about  _ this.  _ This house, this disquiet, this thrumming in his blood telling him that this evening is only going to worsen, it’s driving him crazy. Ironically, Eddie drove cars for a living and yet found himself being driven wildly by his demons  _ still.  _

“Take your medicine, please, dear. I left you some dinner,” she says, voice finding ways to rivet side-to-side in his head, pitchy and uneven. 

He nods numbly, and walks to the kitchen, unaware of how loud his footsteps are, causing Myra to give an  _ ooh!  _ in time with his shoes hitting the tile. 

Eddie reaches into the cabinet as Myra heaves herself up the stairs. He mindfully selects his daily  _ Men’s Health,  _ a couple aspirins, and considers the dinner Myra had left him. After taking each dose though, he decides that sleep sounds the most appealing. 

He stands in the kitchen though, hesitant to end the day on a note such as this. He’d go for a jog- like he’d planned for his new years resolution and ditched just as fast when Myra pointed out his asthma- if it weren’t already so dark outside. He’d actually gone once. The burning sensation in his lungs was something he’d learned to move past, as well as the hot dryness in his throat. Eddie remembered, after a while the pain would ease into the metronome of his feet and it would coil in his stomach and leave him with bursts of energy until he made his way back home. 

Myra hadn’t been happy. She’d crossed her arms, offered a pout, but made him tea and an omelet nevertheless. 

Eddie liked to argue with himself some days, but he loved her. He really did. Perhaps not the way most men loved their wives- with rough lust and booming voices- but he loved her. His own way of showing it was subtle. Eddie bought her records he knew she’d like. And once he’d even danced with her to some sweet melody. 

Lost now, he couldn’t hear the piano in his head no matter how hard he was trying, with his fist white-knuckled at the counter. If he squeezed hard enough, he could hear his right arm click and almost sense a sort of phantom pain that was left there. 

It revolted him at first, the disgusting revelation that he was assembled of bones that could break and  _ snap-  _ but it became a habit when he was wound up. The sound was an odd sort of soothing- not like wrapping a cut in gauze, but like digging his thumb deeper into the open wound and inhaling copper. 

If only his mother could see him now. Fucked up by her and the world and the  _ clown  _ and still carrying around the medical tools he despised out of a weakness she herself had embedded in him. 

Except he  _ couldn’t  _ be weak. He’d defeated Derry’s monster. 

It was all coming back. Eddie stumbles, drunk on memorabilia, into the recliner in the sitting room. What would the Losers Club think? The summer of 1958’s heirlooms of seven slightly broken people? Would they have much to say if they could see him now? 

_ E-E-Eddie, are y-you o-o-o-o-okay?  _

_ C’mon Eds!  _

Stan Uris would give his characteristic half-smile and grip his shoulder- not like Myra- like how a bird’s foot curled perfectly around a branch. Beverly Marsh would laugh, saccharine and sugary and warm like fresh honey (Eddie despised honey, having being force-fed it for years. Oh, head cold? Honey may help rid of your sore throat. Chronically drowsy? Honey might wake you up, dear! You work behind the wheel, you mustn’t doze off! Grumpy before school? His mother would frown at him, a foreboding look across her leathery skin, and ball her fists as she hunkered into the kitchen. Cabinets would slam, silverware would clink, and next thing, his throat would be cushioned with the grossly warm and languid ambrosia). Bev,  _ Bevvie  _ was a different breed of honey though. The type that was welcoming on a bad day, the honey in warm tea. Ben Hanscom would open his mouth and tell him a fun fact. They’d go to the library sometimes- when Eddie was tired of home and Ben was tired of his television, and Ben’s perpetual flushed cheeks would seem brighter in the library’s lighting as they exchanged comics. Mike would just shrug and offer a tidbit of wisdom or describe what farm life was like in a series of anecdotes about milking cows or whatever. 

More importantly, how were they faring? 

Some he was made aware of. Bill and Ben were regarded famously for their crafts. He thought he’d heard Richie’s grown, deep drawl over the radio once or twice. His wife owned a few blouses uniquely made by Miss Beverly Marsh’s expertise. 

So, fine. And Eddie was fine too. 

He stares at the shelves, lightened just a little over his recollections. 

Sure, there were the parts he didn’t want to think about ever again, but he would simply not think of them.  _ _

Myra turns over in bed. He hears it rumble though the house. “Edddie..” 

He inhales and exhales before trekking up the stairs. In true Eddie Kaspbrak sneaking out of the house fashion, he makes no sound. None at all. 

She goes on about how she missed him today, while he removes his socks and his trimmed suit. He nods and fills the space between her mumbling and his own rustling with absentminded  _ uh-huhs  _ until he’s bundled himself in sweatpants and a loose-fitting shirt between the sheets. Myra attempts to beckon him closer, maybe into her chest- it’s winter, she’s undoubtedly cold with their harsh air conditioning, but Eddie kisses her cheek and whispers

“Tired, baby. Not tonight. _ ”  _

They were a happy couple, he tells himself, scooting closer to his side of the bed. Myra was already beginning to snore, just knowing Eddie was there. And he was finally calmed, knowing he was in their home and his job hadn’t followed him back. 

The air beats over the blankets, rising his goosebumps as his eyes fall shut. 

“ _ Eddieee,”  _ a voice rasps. He makes a small noise and turns into his pillow, surely having imagined it. 

But he didn’t. It comes again, this time accompanied by a slimy hand he recognizes with his blood running cold. “ _ Edddd-hieee.”  _

The hand strokes his calf and Eddie, convinced this was a horrible sort of waking nightmare, writhes around rather than making noise to not stirr Myra. 

It finds purchase on his knee, holding tight. He feels the leper’s mouth above his ear, dripping pus or blood and words that ring a bell in him from when he was younger:  _ “what about a blowjob, Eddie? ‘Name’s Bob Gray, I do it for a dime-”  _

He turns on his back to see, with dawning fear, the leper was there and just as real as it was the day he’d first encountered it. Eddie stifles a scream and chokes on the air instead. The leper, with its near-dissolved nose and rolled back eyes, leans close. Eddie can practically taste the illness, the  _ disease  _ coming from it. He chokes. 

“- _ I do it anytime!”  _

_ “ _ No, n-no,” Eddie says quietly, rushed under his breath. This can’t be happening. That only happens back in Derry. And they’d gotten rid of it. There was no way. 

The leper crawls until it’s situated between him and Myra, who was clearly as asleep as she would get, with a contented smile on her face. The leper’s hands reach for her hair and Eddie, feeling sick, tries to grab the leper’s wrist. 

“No,” is all he can get out of his mouth. 

“ _ Yes, Eddie,”  _ the leper says, voice taunting, rumbling in its throat, which was gaping and running blood, pus, mucus. Eddie shivers. No. No. 

He falls out of bed, feet tangled in the sheets. His hands carry him in a sort of crab-walk across the floor until he’s clinging onto the door. The leper sits patiently on the bed, and tilts its decaying head. 

“ _ What do you want, Edddieee?”  _

He runs. He runs so fast his heart is in his throat, aspirator forgotten on his nightstand. 

-

It was late. So, so stupidly late than Ben found himself glaring at the moon outside the long, glass windows as the conference progressed. Somewhere in the static, he registered the reverent voices of his assistants. They were assembling a collection of blueprints for his newest idea, but he couldn’t seem to focus this late. Ben turns to peek at his watch when-

“Mr. Hanscom?” 

He blinks. “Yes?” 

“How do you plan to persuade the landowners to let you build this?” 

Ben sighs, downing the rest of his water in one breath. The crawling sensation across his torso makes him sober to the rest of the individuals in the room awaiting his answer. He puts his cup down. 

“I can be very persuasive,” he assures. 

They nod, and nod, and nod, until he himself seems to be nodding off as well. His eyes close, and just as his eyelashes grow parallel to his cheeks, he snaps awake again like a puppet to its master. 

“Alright. I think we have a clear enough outline, what do you all say?” 

Ben hears a grumbled  _ yes, sure  _ leave his mouth. 

“Thank you everyone, you can all make your way home.” 

Triumph, at last. See, Ben loved to work. The devotion of sitting at his desk and etching his measurements and watching them spring onto an empty lot with people who would reside inside, was wonderful. He was endlessly grateful for where he’d gotten. 

But a day filled with the technicalities? Contracts, emails, and such bored him out of his mind. As a kid, he’d longed to be a part of something not only for the result, but the journey too. Obviously, younger Ben Hanscom had never sat at a desk for ten hours straight before. 

Ben musters up his warmest goodbyes, gives a few friendly hugs, and makes his way to the door. The building was modernesque- with tall glass windows and a view that never ceased to be breathtaking, hence why he found himself studying it every time he drifted off. He enjoyed it, but now he would enjoy sitting on his couch with a dinner, a drink, and his dog. 

So he plays with the thought of taking the stairs tonight. That idea is quenched as quick as it came when he sees several other committee members heading the same way he was. 

The elevators were nice, after all. He didn’t know why exactly he was wary of them tonight. Ben had felt especially on edge since one of the interns that morning, eager to entertain, jumped as the elevator went down, and for a split second, he felt like he was falling, 

(falling, falling right into  _ Henry Bowers)  _

Ben inhales sharply at that, recalling the malicious,  _ insane _ sneer that boy used to give him. He forgot a lot of things, sure, but he was never given the option to forget that boy. His first initial was carved into his stomach. The ruthless letter  _ H  _ just above his appendix had faded into his skin a fair bit since he’d grown, but the slight formation of the three carved lines was yet to fully disappear. 

As he marches down the hallways, Ben Hanscom remembers, for the first time since he’d started high school, everything that brutal scuffle with Bowers entailed. A newfound group of friends, a purpose, and of course, Pennywise. 

The name sends a wave of adrenaline through him even now. He nearly doubles over at the fear that seizes him. 

Then, he laughs. Easygoing and free. He’s escaped that now. He grew up. 

Ben makes it a point to stop by the break room. There was a coffee machine in there and with his head taking him decades a minute and with the drive home being as long as it was, he would be glad to have the caffeine. 

He closes the door behind him and makes for the machine, finding the room empty, he lets his shoulders sag and his plastered  _ amiable work smile  _ minimize into an expression of neutrality. 

The machine starts with a medley of bubbling noises that ease Ben back even further to his childhood. The summer of ‘58, specifically. That was the peak of his childhood and also the end of it, he thought to himself with amusement. 

Boy, the Losers sure knew how to make him feel like a kid. Bill Denbrough, who he’d heard was an accomplished novelist now, was the ringleader. Not that he was surprised. Ben had stayed at the boy’s house once, and scanned some of his papers he was yet to turn in for a writing assignment. The story had been projection, Ben gathered at the time. A narrative told through the eyes of a young boy as he lost himself in the sewers, and later to a zombie. 

Later, it would evolve into something Bill published later on. Ben saw it at the airports when he’d travel for work. 

Then there was Richie Toizer and Eddie Kaspbrak, who’d been vastly inseparable and constantly bickering for the majority of that summer when they  _ weren’t  _ fighting the being that resided under Derry. He recalls once they’d near slapped one another, only for Eddie to recoil from Richie’s haphazard thrown hand with a face much like Ben’s own when he’d lock eyes with Beverly Marsh- wide-eyed and red as a strawberry.  _ My mom would be upset  _ Eddie had shrugged when Richie froze in confusion. Richie would laugh and instead throw the arm over Eddie’s shoulders.  _ Wouldn’t want dear old Mrs. K to be upset, especially when she’s waiting for me tonight, you know to..  _ And Toizer would flirtatiously wiggle his eyebrows until Eddie’s resolve fell and he dug his elbow into Richie’s ribs. 

Beverly made him feel like he was on fire. Her chapped lips and intense green eyes would keep him tossing and turning after a long day at the Quarry. Once, she’d hugged him, more out of the need to hug  _ anything,  _ but it was him, nevertheless, and he’d never felt so much like he was meant to be anywhere than when he was in her arms. 

Since then, Ben’s had few relationships. He had work, anyways. 

The coffee finishes, as the increased room temperature and incessant beeping from the machine indicates, and he takes his usual three cream, two sugar and then travels to the nearest elevator. 

Except, he doesn’t. The door, when he tugs at the handle, refuses to open. Ben makes a high pitched  _ hmp?  _ sound and tries again. To his avail, the third and fourth tries also fail. 

“Great,” Ben scoffs. “I’ll be doing overtime.” He guesses someone had locked the door without thinking. It locked from the outside, which he thought was quite stupid as an architect himself, but the design still persisted. 

He sips at the coffee, discovering that it’s still alarmingly hot, and sticks his tongue out for a moment to expose it to the cool air in the room. While he’s fussing, a small rustling sound emits from behind him. 

_ Rats,  _ Ben thinks,  _ we’ve been trying to get rid of them here for years.  _

Not rats. Mummies. 

Upon turning, Ben comes face to face with what he’d seen under the bridge at the Barrens when he was eleven years old- a half-embalmed, dusty- smelling, frothing, growling, mummy. And it didn’t look like a stunt from a double feature at the Aladdin, but a  _ real, authentic  _ mummy. The parchment encasing its body falls around its arms and feet, swaying side to side. 

He takes the only step back he possibly can- right into the locked door. 

It advances, garbled speech falling from its reeking jowls.

Ben bites the back of his hand before he can scream. The coffee in that hand falls to the floor. No worries, though. The sting of his teeth on his thumb and the searing hot warmth on his pants did the job caffeine was meant to do in even less time. 

The mummy roars, resounding greatly in the tiny room. Ben shivers a little and curls into the door, hoping maybe it’ll collapse and he’ll be granted an escape. 

It gets closer, closer,  _ closer  _

More of the bandages begin to fall, unravelling skin the color of ash and mildewy fingers reach up to grasp his neck. Ben yanks away the arm by the wrist before it can touch him, and by touching, by establishing contact, he has also established this is real. 

He hadn’t escaped. They hadn’t defeated It. 

The mummy struggles in Ben’s grip, and its gibberish grows louder. It’s utter nonsense, really, nothing more than grainy sputters, gasps, and haggard grunts, but he swears that he can understand what it’s saying in words. 

_ fatboy, fatboy, fatboy, teach you to throw rocks, teach you to throw  _

_ (january embers) _

In front of his eyes, the head of the mummy grows. Grows so ithe and baring that he’s face to face with teeth that aren’t human. Ben turns his head first, so that the snapping bites only graze the side of his face, and second, so that he doesn’t have to  _ smell,  _ or god forbid,  _ see  _ the thing. 

With pressure than no undead creature should realistically be able to inflict, the mummy crushes him and Ben feels the door dig into his back, hears the taunting  _ creeaak.  _

He lets himself be pressed, then stretches out his foot so that it hits what he assumes is the mummy’s knee. 

It howls. 

Ben stiffens, if not already afraid, he would be now. He knows that voice. 

“Hey tits,” the voice tuts. 

Ben slips on the spilled coffee after he reflexively tries to run. The mummy had shed its spunk, and underneath every intricate wrap, was none other than Henry Bowers. 

He inhales so harshly that it burns his throat as he gets to his feet, trying the door again. This time it was a frantic juggling of the handle. Behind him, Bowers stirred and more extremities left his mouth. 

“Tits, so you left home, huh? How’d the plane fly with the extra elephant on board?” He snickers, picking his way closer until they’re just about nose to nose. Ben wrinkles his face- flinches, and shuts his eyes as he takes a deep breath. Fear wouldn’t help him now. He wasn’t gonna die, he wasn’t gonna 

“Throw rocks? You gonna throw rocks at me now, chubhouse? Where are your friends? Are B-Buh-B-B-Bill and the  _ boys  _ here? What about the  _ whore?  _ You know who I mean.” Henry, with a delicate hand, lifts Ben by his jaw and slams his head back against the door. 

Molten lava spurts in his head. He can taste blood in his mouth and surely it’s running down his scalp now. 

“Don’t call her that,” he spits out. 

“Fatboy, fatboy, fatboy,” Henry chants, until the door gives and Ben takes off down the corridor. 

-

Beverly Marsh (Beverly Rogan, really, but could that be her name if she still heard whispers in her head utter  _ Bev Marsh  _ when she thought back to happier times? Could she ever be the perfect, trophy-wife Beverly Rogan if she never felt like she was winning. She felt solemnly silver, never gold and never bronze.) cuts her finger with the knife she’s using to slice up a variety of vegetables. She’s been gifted a book filled with recipes and she’s looking forward to trying some out for herself, as she’s had the day off work. 

Tom was off, drinking his head away while watching  _ the game  _ with his guy friends in their living room. She blocked off their howling as best she could with a record of piano music and her own humming and kitchen noises. 

She makes sure that her intake of breath upon cutting her finger was hushed. She didn’t need his attention right now. Beverly douses the cut under the sink. As the water, cold enough to sting, cleans the cut, she discovers that it’s plenty deeper than she thought. She unceremoniously takes a seat at the kitchen island and applies a paper towel around her pointer finger. A ghostly pang hits her hand again when she looks a little closer and notices the scar there. It’s from when she was a kid- eleven, maybe twelve. She can’t remember quite where she got it, but she remembers that it was important. 

The bleeding stops and then she’s up again, throwing whatever she’s managed to cut into the mix of oil and spaghetti. 

A loud yell from the living room causes her to flinch. Beverly turns her head, peeking through the narrow doorway. She spies Tom and his friends in a frenzy, leaping around and giving each other noogies. And in that moment where none of them can see her, she rolls her eyes. 

Or so she thought. 

As she leisurely turns around, a hand clamps down between her neck and her shoulder, and the fingers bite enough to leave bruises. She starts and makes to face her husband, knowing with sharp accuracy that the only hand a grip as ruling could belong to was his or her father’s. 

And her father was gone. Back in Derry. Gone. 

“ _ Bevvie, baby. Bevvie, I thought I saw you rolling your eyes at me and my boys. Is that how a wife should regard her husband? That’s very immature of you and I can’t have that in front of my friends, can I? I need you to behave, Bevvie.”  _

She nods absently. She can physically feel her brain depart, leaving a headspace that’s dusy and empty- a headspace she’s been trapped in for years. 

“Yes, sir.” 

He digs his fingernails into her skin until she jumps. 

“ _ Okay, we’ll handle this tonight. _ .” He talks with a pretty poison she doesn’t know whether run from or die from. 

She shivers. Beverly wasn’t stupid- she was well-conditioned to what  _ handle this tonight  _ meant. Come eleven-thirty, Beverly Marsh would find herself halfway buried in the sheets as Tom used her until he was satisfied she’d  _ learned her lesson.  _ (want a whuppin’ baby?)

With no real feeling at all, she finishes the pasta and takes a few mouthfuls for herself. They taste like the pillows she bites into when she wants to cry at Tom’s ministrations. 

Beverly saves the dinner for another time. A happier, more peaceful night, maybe. 

Half past eleven, and she was correct. Beverly holds onto the disheveled sheets like a lifeline as the rest of her body dissolves into 

(fire hurt burning fire) 

It’s another hour before he shoves off her with a scowl. “ _ You learn anything, Bev? _ ” 

She stifles a whine as she shifts onto her stomach, covering her chest with the dirty sheets. Sweat pours from her neck to her ankles, and all she wants right now to wash the sweat out of her hair, brush through the knots Tom’s created, and lean in the jets of hot 

(blood water) 

until she feels clean again. 

“Yes, s-sir,” she says shakily. 

Tom Rogan smiles down at her, clad in a shirt and a cruel grin. “ _ I’m gonna go for a walk, Bevvie. When I’m back, you’ll be asleep and I’ll have a drink. Tomorrow morning I’ll drive us out to the breakfast diner. What do you say?”  _

She nods, mustering a bright smile for his sake and for her own too. 

He tugs at the zipper on his pants, eyeing her smugly. Why did she think he would ever look upon her with fondness that was real? He was only proud of himself. And yet.

“ _ Did you hear me? I don’t wanna have to give you another whuppin’. _ ”

She speaks up. “Yes, that sounds delightful.” 

The words would hurt less if her throat wasn’t littered with bruises. 

She hears two door slams. First, her own, and second, the front door. The lights flicker off and then lets herself sigh openly. Beverly sits up, pushing with the minimal strength left in her arms after having them held above her head for so long. She melts into the pillow, walking the mental cycle she visited often these days. (I love him. I do. And he loves me. Just like Daddy did. He doesn’t  _ want  _ to give me a beating. But he has to. I never learn. This is good for me. This is good for me.) 

Eventually, Beverly makes her way to the bathroom. Before she can make it to the tile, however, her legs give out and an alluring sort of tunnel vision tempts her into feeling faint. 

As she loses the last clinging bit of consciousness, she hears a laugh- bubbly and evil. 

Before she opens her eyes, Beverly stretches across the floor, snapping her hand back when it brushed against  _ something.  _

It’s dark. Silent. Tom hasn’t come home yet. She checks the clock. 11:43, it says. She was out for only a few minutes. Beverly scrambles onto the bed, only noticing the mass of balloons on her floor when she pops a chain of them on her way off the carpet. 

There’s dozens of them, all red, all labelled with  _ slut  _ and  _ whore.  _

(slutchild)

She bunches her hands over her mouth as if it’ll silence the ragged gasp that escapes. Bev inhales and closes her eyes. She’s tired, this is all a dream. 

Then they open, and there is a clown there. 

Beverly screams, voice pulled thin and airy out of fear and the aching of her ribs. Pennywise giggles, eerily still in the doorway with a balloon in his hand.  _ I LOVE DERRY,  _ it says in gaudy block letters. Then she remembers. 

The summer of ‘58, the wretched clown,  _ Bill Denbrough, Ben Hanscom, Eddie Kaspbrak, Richie Tozier…  _

Her thought process is cut short by Pennywise’s laughter turning into a low, barely audible, hum. Blood spouts from his eyes, his nose, his mouth, and the balloon bursts splatters of blood onto the walls. She screams again, indifferent to the fact that Tom may arrive any minute. Sure, he scared her some days, but this, this here, with  _ It  _ at her bedside, twenty-seven years later, this was the true fear she’d been running from. Ironically, she’d run right into her second fear in the process. She found refuge in fear, as much as she hated to admit it. 

Pennywise doesn’t speak. He doesn’t even move. Nor blink. 

He stares her down as all the balloons pop around them. She feels blood hit her cheek, then her nose, then her fingers. Beverly is dimly aware of the tears that mingle with the blood on her face. 

She gets to her feet, wincing as her legs wobble and protest, then shrieks with every fiber she can put into her voice, 

“Get out! Get out of here! We killed you! Leave! You’re not  _ real!”  _

Pennywise tilts his head slowly. The lamp by her bedside flickers. The yellow lampshade was drenched in blood, creating an ominous orange glow for a second before they’re plunged back into darkness. 

“I’m not real?” 

Beverly nods shakily. He  _ isn’t.  _ He can’t be. 

“I’m real enough for  _ Bill,  _ and  _ Ben, and Eddie and Richie, and Stanley Uris and Mike Hanlon. I’m real enough for them, aren’t I real to you Bevvie? I know they are.”  _

His voice turned demonic the more he spoke, deafening to the point where she backed into the bed’s headboard with her hands hovering over her ears. 

“ _ And I know who is the most real, just for you Bevvie-”  _ The door downstairs opens and Tom’s voice is distinctly audible as he heads towards the stairs. 

One step. Two, three. Six. “Heard you crying out for the whole neighborhood, Beverly! Screaming like you’d been attacked! What the hell is going on? Jesus Christ!” Tom nears. The stairs warn her in wounded cries. 

“- _ Daddy’s little girl,”  _ is spat into her ear before she’s alone again. Dripping with blood in a bloody room with a husband who won’t hesitate to beat the daylights out of her once he sees that she's not asleep. 

Beverly runs into the bathroom, adrenaline carrying her despite her dubious state of being. She locks the door. Tom bounds over, she can hear him grunting in disbelief. 

The bathtub is filled with blood. A bloodbath.

Beverly Marsh utters a howling cry, long and loud and hoarse. Anybody who heard it better believe she was 

-

“Trying to beat the devil, are you, Richie?” 

He shrugs, phone held between his left ear and his shoulder as he arranges a platter of leftovers. It’s nearly midnight, and Richie Tozier chose now to review his schedule with his manager. Ever so convenient, he inwardly jests with a sarcastic grin. 

“Maybe so, boss.” 

“Since you asked, and I’m up anyway dealing with disc jockeys like you all the time, I’ll give it to you simple. Tomorrow, you’re interviewing an emerging band- make some jabs at boybands, yaknow, that ordeal. Then next there’s a radio show debut, they want you to headline. And…” 

Richie, between mouthfuls of cold meatloaf, scribbles the pretenses onto a piece of paper he’d ripped out of a notebook for this occasion. 

“That’s all until November, you’re booked everywhere, boy. Ah, Richie? Are you even listening to me?” 

Richie Tozier perks up, fumbling a fork and a pen in each hand and half a brain in his head. “Yessir! I’m always e’re! Lovva’ listenin’ to ya, sir!” That voice was new. What would he call it?

He can practically see the scowl on the mister’s face, eyes gone blank and hard and thin lips drawn back into the reserves of his mouth. “Don’t give me that this late, Rich. Don’t.” 

“Technically,” Richie says, throwing the pen elsewhere once he’s finished writing hasty reminders, “It’s early, not late.” 

An abrupt groan emits from the other line. He smiles. God, the  _ effect  _ he had on people. Charm unlike any other. 

“You’re wearing my patience, Tozier. The only reason I’m hooked to you like a baited fish is that you’re a money-maker. Remember that.” 

Richie smiles, bright and relaxed. He knew this well, but the man's voice, for a second, with its short-tempered, pinched cadence, almost sounded like- 

(your dirty little secret) 

_ Eddie.  _

He fumbles with the phone, just barely catching it in midair.  _ Eddie? Eddie Kaspbrak? And- and Bill Denbrough and Stan Uris!  _

Richie hears himself vaguely forming a reply while he reminisces.  _ The good ol’ near-death experience that was the summer of 1958!  _ It was him, Eds, Big Bill, Ben “Haystack” Hanscom, Bev, Stan, and Mike! With a fondness vastly unmatched by anything he’d felt in a while, the memories all food back into his head. There was the time he, Bill, and Haystack built a dam down at the Barrens, or the time they all launched rocks at Henry Bower’s gang of delinquents and  _ won!  _ Yeah, they’d all gotten together- declaring themselves  _ The Losers Club  _ (a name fashioned by yours truly) and- 

and? 

“-thinking we could get me a spot up on that morning commute station? I love the evening ones, but I don’t get home until around eleven-thirty because time zones are a  _ bitch!”  _

A sigh. For a second, the breath cuts out across the line, giving it a quality similar to a growl. Or perhaps his boss just growled at him- not that Richie would be all too gobsmacked by anything anymore. He’d seen it all, rising as a bottom-feeder at emerging celebrity parties. Cocaine, voyeurism, that one actor from a murder documentary get so drunk that he blew chunks on not one or two strippers, but  _ three.  _ Richie had gotten a few chucks out of that one. Absolutely chuckalicious, as he used to say in order to lighten up Stan and Eddie while they studied together, or Ben when he was excruciatingly insecure. It may have been childish, but Richie had to cut off the rushing thoughts as quickly as they came, not anticipating how  _ lonely  _ they made him feel now. Sure, he had comrades he’d collected at gigs and contacts he used to climb the ladder of fame, but he couldn’t exactly tell them anything past how the weather struck him or who he thought stood a chance in the nearest  _ game.  _ Football, soccer, baseball, tennis, hockey.. Richie didn’t give a crap. Richie didn’t give a crap if it was wrapped in chocolate with a cherry on top. 

Somewhere, somewhere deep in the crevices of his muddled head, wallowing, there was something clawing its way out. Something urgent- more pressing than the superbowl or whatever. 

“Rich, you’ll make it to whatever station you like when you get your ass to bed, shower in the morning, and go to  _ fucking work without calling me when we should both be sleeping!”  _

“All due respect, but you sound  _ just like  _ my mother,” Richie rambles. He cringes immediately after. Horrible choice of words. Blech! Horrible. “And what’s wrong with showering at night?” 

“Bed bugs in the mornin’” his boss answers. 

Richie musters a dramatic, debauched gasp. “I clean my sheets once a week! No way I’m coming into your building with fleas. The only annoyance that gets the privilege of working with you is  _ me. _ ” 

“Whatever you say, Rich. Was that all we needed to discuss?” 

“Oh, uh- yeah. Goodnight.” 

“Night-” The call ends with a satisfying click. 

Richie lays the phone on the table, and shovels a couple more bites of grub into his mouth. Then against his will, more scenes from what? Twenty-seven years ago play out. Himself, and the six others, stacked up like bowling pins against Henry Bowers and his rats. A small spasm erupts under his skin precisely where he’d been hit with a hefty stone, right on his cheekbone. He’d had a bruise there for months, it seemed like. 

There came a time when your memories coupled into a grey, thick, droop as soft as gauze. Though soft, you couldn’t puncture it completely no matter how hard you tried. Because you’ve grown; and you don’t need the past anymore, no more than it ever needed you. You’re residue flying rapidly towards the impending future, and there isn’t a single thing you can do about it. 

Richie Toizer was about two minutes away from ripping the gauze apart thread by thread. 

Yes, he clicks his heels on the way to the kitchen to dump his plate in the sink. (He can do the dishes tomorrow, between catching up on sleep and halfwittedly forming new skits.) He had many good times, filled to the brim of the hat with laughter and lollygagging on school assignments. Vividly, the image of Bill Denbrough, Stan Uris, and Eddie Kaspbrak fill his head. School bells ring in his head, and Eddie’s intermittent complaints as they trekked from the school grounds and into the summer of their lives. 

(deaths) 

Stan Uris would drop his bird book, and Bill would bend over to pick it up for him, and Richie would watch in rampant horror as Patrick Hockstetter shoved him over. Big Bill would slide through the halls and the  _ bang  _ of his back slamming against the row of lockers would echo at least four times through the halls. 

They’d all cracked up and Bill would blush all trim and soft, and they’d muck around in the Barrens much to Stan’s wrinkled-nose disgust and Eddie’s thumping asthmatic heart speeding up everytime he caught a whiff of something new. 

How frivolous they’d gotten down there. The clubhouse, the  _ smokehole,  _ where he and Mike Hanlon saw the beginning of the world, and what very well could have been the end of it. The countless chases by school enemies, games of tag where Ben Hanscom would take victory because he was clever at blending in and moving fast when he wanted to, or hide and seek, where Eddie’s meek stature would squeeze him into a hollow log. 

They would never find him themselves, no, Eddie Kaspbrak would rush out in a teary, wound-up mood brought on by the  _ contaminated air  _ and  _ itchy plants  _ that he wholeheartedly claimed may send him straight to the hospital if he stayed there for. One. Second. Longer! 

Richie, hunched over his sink, running his plate under the lukewarm water for something forty seconds, reaches to shut off the water. Only when the cold silver stings his warm skin do the remainder of his memories come back- ailing from the corners of his skull, soaked in avarice and dread. 

The stains that never came out of his crisp shirt and boyshorts. The reeking, lingering scent of shit and blood and grime in his nose for weeks. His palm with the miniscule scar left there by Bill Denbrough, after they swore they’d come back to stop It if 

(when)

It rose again.

The phone rings, and before Richie can pick it up, a distorted, gruff voice fills the apartment. Maniacal laughter, throaty and bass-deep raps on for a minute and a half before he comes to his senses and hangs up. 

But the laughter doesn’t stop. It continues on in a cacophonic rampage. 

Then, it howls. 

( _ werewolf movie at the Aladdin)  _

The howl is so disastrously loud that Richie hobbles around the apartment, one hand cupping his ear and the other reaching up, up, as if God could help him now. 

A voice comes through- a faux announcer voice. 

_ “ _ WELCOME TO THE ALL DEAD ROCKSHOW _ ”  _

_ (an emerging band) _

Richie pushes his glasses up his nose, frozen to the spot. No, that- 

“RICHIE TOIZER DIES FOR  _ YOUR  _ SINS!” 

( _ some jabs)  _

A small, broken  _ wha  _ zips past his lips. He falls onto the couch, clambering messily away from the phone which had started to vibrate on the table. 

“AAAAANNND YOU GET TO LAUGH!! HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!! HEY RICHIE!” 

He ducks below the pile of pillows and blankets. (Sometimes he didn’t get to his bedroom before he fell asleep- night shifts and all) He whimpers as a thundering applause comes from the speakers. 

“I SAID  _ HEY RICHIE!”  _

“Hey,” he weakly cries out the same way a baby’s cry started soft. 

“I KNOW YOUR DIRTY LITTLE SECRET! HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!” 

“DON’T TOUCH THE

(Trashmouth) 

OTHER BOYS!” 

Richie feels the lump in his throat when it pops like a balloon, and he chokes on the tears as he runs up to the phone and stomps it to the cries from mayhem (DON’T TOUCH THE OTHER BOYS RICHIE, OR THEY’LL KNOW THEIR SECRET!! DON’T TOUCH THE  _ SECRET  _ SECRET secret) 

The voice sizzles out, and as he’s cleaning up the pieces, one last eligible phrase comes through:

_ Beep-beep, Richie.  _

-

As far as he had commissioned, there were three options to choose from. 

(Scary) 

The cover with the sloping staircase that led into a lit hallway with blood puddles coming from under the doors was certainly appealing. It communicated the subtext well, and looked chilling but not chilling enough to frighten youthful passersbys at bookstores. 

(Not Scary at All)

A simple abstract painting of a cherry was all that was on this cover. The artist behind it, someone working on a shoestring, he was sure- as most artists are- had textured the cover so it felt like a canvas. Bill enjoyed this one, specifically because the only hint that the novel’s genre was horror were the artful droplets of blood surrounding the cherry. 

(Very Scary)

This one, he particularly avoided because the cover was much too gruesome to sell publicly, and because it brought to mind a feeling Bill didn’t quite know how to comprehend. The ragtag figure with glowing silver eyes and an amber necklace glimmering from the shadows sent gooseflesh up and down his arms. And yet, he was enraptured by it. He couldn’t look away despite the two rising emotions it inflicted on him- unexplainable fear and guilt. And the button-eyed heads of the characters he’d created and killed float around the corners at the cover, mocking him. 

Bill Denbrough keeps alternating between the three covers. Of course, if need be, he could simply request and commission more for a cost that wouldn’t hurt him, but he felt one of these was  _ the one.  _

So he makes a mature choice. Bill closes his eyes, and moves them around the desk with both hands. He then lifts his hands, and strangely finds that the papers skid around for another second or two before they stop. He walks a few fingers across the wood and settles on the middle paper. 

(Not Scary at All) 

The painted cherry stares back at him with disdain Bill didn’t expect from a book cover made for him. He shrugs, trusting his intuition and setting on contacting the artist. Midway through typing Bill scoots back in his chair. His hands seem to have frozen over the keys and he can’t- he can’t move now, past the wall of paralyzing fear freezing him up. He licks his lips and just before he’s about to shrug it off as caffeine and exhaustion and then try again, a burning pain lights up his hand. He cradles it to his chest, hearing himself suck in a harsh breath. The pain kept coming, as if someone had dug a knife deep into his palm and serrated the flesh.

Bill unclenches his fist and sees a real scar there. A jagged line inching down the center of his palm. 

He wretches away from the desk, hit with the weight of a rabid animal.  _ IT. IT. IT! Georgie, Beverly, Stanley, Richie, Eddie, Mike, Ben-! The Losers Club, the summer of 1958, the deadlights!  _

His head sends white hot, electric pains down his spine as his hand begins to burn again. How did he forget? How could he  _ ever  _ forget? There was the clubhouse and the rock fight and the smokehole and quarry- 

In the midst of aimlessly pacing their house while unwarranted memories quite literally attack him, the front door opening and closing yanks Bill Denbrough right out of his shaken reverie. 

Audra stands there, red hair around her shoulders in a wild friz, and face prostrate after a long day of filming. She walks up to him, dropping her bookbag on the couch, and wraps her arms around his neck. Bill forces himself to be still even when her arms feel more like that of a clown’s cutting off his air flow. He gently grabs her hips as a way of steadying himself. 

“How was your day?” He asks, voice coming out weak and hazy. 

She shrugs, leaning forward into a hug so he can rub her back. “Long hours. They made me reshoot the same scene for three hours, then changed the scene and made me do it another four hours without a break.” 

He pulls her in tight, really doing his best to listen. But her voice is sounding more like- 

( _ you lied and I died)  _

Beverly Marsh’s, and, as she steps back, Bill finds it harder and harder to believe he didn’t just marry the first woman who bore a striking resemblance to her. Audra stood out in a crowd the same way Beverly had- with her red hair and bright eyes and small quirk in the corner of her lips. 

Audra smiles. “You okay, Bill?” 

He nods. “Tired.” 

She takes his hand and leads him into the kitchen. “That makes both of us. Why don’t I make us some food?” 

Bill shakes his head this time. “I can run out and get something, you’ve worked enough.” 

Audra’s eyes are big and loving when she turns around. She steps into his space and kisses him, her floral perfume bringing him back from memory lane for a brief moment. 

While their lips lock, he remembers how Beverly’s felt when they- The two had kissed a few times. Small and juvenile, but they meant the entire world to him when he was just twelve years old. And here he was, thinking of it while he kissed his  _ wife.  _

A wave of irrational, misplaced anger washes over Bill. He ends the kiss and backs away to grab his keys. “I’ll be back in a bit,” he says. 

She makes to go lay on their couch, looking just a little abandoned. 

( _ lost, we all float down here Georgie)  _

He comes and goes, selecting a deli down the street from their house that they both enjoyed. Of course, he was a semi-accomplished novelist and Audra was one of the world’s most famous actresses, but they settled for the smaller luxuries more often than not. 

Bill runs into just one person who recognizes him, and smiles at the book in their hands when they give him a double take. 

The walk back home launches him headfirst back into his adolescent years. He solemn walked home alone- usually having Richie Tozier or Stan Uris or Eddie Kaspbrak accompanying him for dinner and homework. He can summon to memory now a plethora of joyful hangtimes he is still hung on actually forgetting. 

There was a time when they  _ all  _ were at Bill’s house. The nightly cartoons flickered past on their small box TV while Ben and Richie did impressions of the characters. Mike choked on his food because he was laughing so hard, and Stan pat his back while Bill poured him some more water. Eddie and Bev had quietly chuckled through exchanged words on the recliner. Bev was tucked under a knit blanket and Eddie was perched on the armrest. They’d had spaghetti that night, and Ben had helped him make it beforehand. 

And then night fell, and they’d recounted their encounters with  _ IT  _ to the white noise of Bill’s parents snoring

(Georgie not being there) 

and the crickets outside. 

They’d defeated It, right? He recalled delivering a round of blows during  _ chud  _ and being swallowed by the darkness that was the deadlights. Bill shivers. Why did he feel that It was coming back again? It wasn’t dead- It had never  _ been  _ dead. 

He lurches through the doors with one resolute thought  _ I have to go back to Derry- we all do.  _ Audra offers a full smile and he gives her the paper bag of sandwiches. 

“I’ll have mine later, Audra. I have one more thing to write.” 

She squeezes his shoulder and Bill wants to embrace her- to forget about all this again and go on living the safe life he’d found solace in, but he musters a close-lipped smile and stalks back into his office. 

The wooden desk looms below the window like the

(monster in the sewers) 

moon crosses in front of the sun during an eclipse. Bill takes a seat, solidly glaring down at the patronizing covers that haven’t moved. He half expected something to pop out from the ink, but nothing did. 

A small semblance of relief, not really. He completes his letter and sends it. 

Then he plasters the cherry cover to the final manuscript of his book. He admires it proudly for a few seconds, then gets a finger under the first cover to put it in the folder where he kept the art that was given to him. 

When his thumb touches the paper, however- the one with the dark hallway and blood puddles- the hallway light turns on. A moving picture. 

(Georgie’s room) 

He backs away, alarmed to the point where the bloody tip of his thumb becomes irrelevant.  _ Don’t touch the pictures,  _ he remembers. 

In the hallway light, the doors all fall down as a colossal stream of blood knocks them off their hinges. Bill sighs in place of a scream- he knows Audra will come running in if she suspects any sense of disarray- and hovers a few feet away from the desk, watching. 

In front of his eyes, an animated clown rises from the chunky mass of blood on the cover, and hobbles down the stairs. The 

(glowing silver eyes) 

soulless eyes and amber buttons on It’s costume become bigger and bigger as the clown gets closer. In a flash of impulse, Bill flips over the cover, and the massive sting that shreds the tips of his fingers spurs him into taking a series of steps back. He wipes the blood off on his flannel sleeve, and recalls thickly that it was the same hand with the scar. The blood oath. 

(if it ever comes back) 

The next cover, the one with the figure and floating heads, begins to move slowly as if moved by a tranquil stream of water. 

(promise) 

Bill squints- and sees the heads are not being moved by anything idle, but a pair of white-gloved hands. The figure steps forward, and he isn’t surprised, isn’t anything more than absolutely furious (and helpless) that it’s Pennywise. 

(you’ll) 

Pennywise’s pitchy laughter fills the room with an echoing resonance that makes him dizzy. Bill keeps his eyes on the page despite his entire peripheral vision swimming with blurs. 

“You killed my b-brother,” he spits out, sputtering at the stutter that has also returned. “Y-you as-s-s-s! You-” 

The heads on the page look at him in tandem, and to his horror, Bill sees they’re all rotted variations of Georgie’s face. One of the four had had its eyes gouged out. The second didn’t have a chin, leaving its jaw to gape open in permanent amazement. The third was covered in a sludgy layer of dirt and grime, and the fourth was holding a paper boat above it’s face. The boat slowly lowers. 

(Come home) “Georgie,” it says. “Come home! Come home! Come home!” 

The bright voice turns into deep, monstrous cries. Somewhere along the timeline of Bill’s rapidly declining facade, he cries too. He dissolves right back into the guilt that had lead his life up to here until he forgot it.  _ He got his brother killed, he left home for the price of not one but two sons, he needed to  _

The boat reveals Georgie’s face. 

(Come home)

The phone rings. 

-

Mike had driven home as fast as he could. He scrambles around for the list of numbers he safekept in his drawer for this. He hadn’t actually thought the time would come, but to his dismay it did. It did. 

That which had presided in their brutal subconscious was crawling- fighting its merry way back out, and engraving its path with the blood of the new wave of people gone missing. 

Through trembling hands and glass eyes, Mike Hanlon picks up the phone to make six of the most urgent calls he’d ever have to make in his life. 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading my self-indulgent writing!! tumblr @poetromantics


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